


All August

by suburbanmotel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Boys Kissing, Fluff and Angst, Grumpy Derek, Idiots in Love, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Shotgunning, oblivious boys, weather-related grumpiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 22:22:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20265451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suburbanmotel/pseuds/suburbanmotel
Summary: August used to be a sad month for him.





	All August

**Author's Note:**

> August/filled hands with language that tastes like smoke.
> 
> _~ Ilya Kaminsky, Dancing in Odessa_

//

_Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet._

When Derek wakes up, he’s lying in a puddle and he’s naked. He blinks at the ceiling — his bedroom ceiling — and lifts his hands up and down beside him a few times, pat pat pat, before daring to look. Could be urine, could be blood, could be, he supposes, _semen_, all fluids potentially belonging to him or to someone else. Anything is possible at this point in his life. Maybe it’s magical, this mystery liquid beneath him, faery juice or gnome snot. Maybe his bedroom ceiling is leaking. Maybe he’s dreaming. Maybe he’s dead.

He sits up a bit and looks down warily. His bedsheets are dark but the wetness is darker. He pats his own body, checking for wounds, newly healed scratches, anything caused by a witch’s hex. Nothing, no pain, no gaping wound, fresh or otherwise. He takes a deep breath in and out in and out and looks around his room. Nothing. He’s alone. He thinks. He remembers running and running last night, fully shifted, through the woods, wind and moonshine in his fur, running like his life depended on it because. Because.

Ah. Right.

He leans over and grabs his phone and looks at the date and realizes why he was running and why he’s wet and why everything sucks.

It’s August. It’s Thursday and it’s August today and it’s August all month and it’s unbearably, stupidly hot and he hates August and he’s lying in his bed in a puddle of his own sweat. Because it’s August.

He _hates_ August. With a _passion._

His room is hot and close and his skin feels thick and close. He kicks his damp sheet to the end of his damp bed and blinks a few times to clear his vision. His eyelashes feel sticky. There is sweat trickling down his neck, gathering along his hairline, his groin the _crack of his ass_.

Last night, the last night of July, he ran and ran and ran, deep and deeper into the woods, leaving the others far behind, Isaac and Erica and Boyd and Scott, howling and kicking up dirt, desperate to keep up but falling back and eventually falling away. He ran until his lungs burned like fire and his paws bled and he has no memory of making it back home to his bed. At midnight the clock ticked over and the calendar ticked over and no amount of running could keep this month away.

He feels, irrationally, like roaring, fangs and claws ineffectual against the oppressive heat. He wants to rip something, rip the air, rip the skin off his body, smash a window, put his fist through a wall. Instead, he sighs and drags himself from the room and takes a long, cold shower, despite the fact that he’ll be dripping sweat again within minutes, despite turning the tap full cold, despite the air conditioning turned down as low as the pack will permit. Nothing helps him in August. August hates him and the feeling is mutual.

“Morning, Derek,” says Erica, seated calm and composed at the kitchen table. She’s sipping coffee. Hot coffee. Derek can see the steam rising from it. He slams his own cup down from the cupboard and fills it with ice cubes. “How’d you sleep?”

“Hotly,” Derek says. He slides two ice cubes into his mouth and sucks them aggressively.

“You _look_ hot,” Stiles says, and Derek jumps, visibly. Behind him, Erica guffaws. 

“Where did you come from?” Derek says, ice cubes jammed into his cheek.

“The front door,” Stiles says. He tilts his head and narrows his eyes. “I’m here to pick up Scott. He slept here, apparently. All of you went _wolfy_ last night and ended up collapsed into some big writhing fur rug pile on the floor.” Stiles shudders.

“We did not,” Derek says and bites down hard on ice.

“Well, not _you_,” Erica says. “You went rogue for hours. Didn’t roll in until almost 4 a.m.” She looks him up and down. “Where did you go, anyway?”

Derek swallows ice and says nothing. He can feel Stiles’ gaze on him, steady, appraising. He listens to Stiles’ heart. It’s tripping along like always, steady and sure, too fast, like always. Observing, like always. Derek glances at him, sees arms crossed over his chest, hands tucked into his armpits.

“You’re cold,” Derek says, puzzled.

Stiles nods. “Yeah, dude. That’s because it’s cold in here.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It kinda is,” Erica says, hands tight around her mug.

Derek scowls and wipes at his sweat-beaded forehead.

“You look _hot_,” Stiles says again and Erica laughs again. “Are you sick or something?

“No,” Derek says, aggrieved. “It’s just a million degrees in here.” He checks the air conditioning setting, turns it down to 68.

“It’s freezing in here,” Isaac says, stumbling in, bundled into a sweatshirt. Derek scowls.

“It’s _not_—”

“Derek’s hot,” says Stiles. That’s the third time, Derek realizes and Erica still finds it amusing.

“He’s also grumpy,” says Isaac. “What’s the matter with you?” he says. “Are you sick?”

“I’m _not_—”

“Werewolves run hot naturally,” says Stiles.

“Yes, Stiles,” says Derek, sucking on another ice cube. “This is a known fact. Thank you.”

“Not that hot,” Erica says. She peers at him. “You’re like, dripping.”

“It’s this weather,” Derek says. He’s starting to feel defensive, and slightly woozy. He can’t help it if he wants to peel his own skin off and he can’t fucking breathe.

They’re all looking at him now and his mouth is starting to feel numb, sharp ends of the ice poking into one cheek, then the other. He feels eyes on him and when he looks up, Stiles is watching, his own mouth slightly open. Derek sucks slowly and thoughtfully, licking at the water as it slips out of his mouth and down his lips. Stiles makes a choking coughing noise and averts his gaze, hand dropping suddenly to the front of his shorts and pushing down hard. Derek rolls his eyes and sighs out through his nose and he’s about to say something cutting and sharp when Scott stumbles in, bleary-eyed and tousle-haired, hi-fiving Stiles and saying,

“Jesus Christ it’s colder than a witch’s tit in here.”

Fucking _August_.

//

_The summer evenings burn and melt and the nights glitter but you’re gonna get it wrong. And it's gonna sink its teeth into your flesh and pull you to the bottom.”_

August does its very best to kill him.

Of course he almost dies in August because August is really the cruellest month fuck Eliot.

It’s all incredibly ordinary and boring and predictable and _hot_ until he gets hurt and almost dies.

A nachtkrapp— a goddamn nachtkrapp black as the sky with talons like daggers — attacks him in the woods when he’s running, fully shifted, running like the wind, desperate for cool air and cool darkness. It dives three times, gouging and digging and scraping before Derek manages to break one of its wings and it flaps away, lopsided and screaming. He lies there contemplating the nature of his existence and the welcome coldness of death, before he drags himself home over dirt and sticks and moss and collapses on the front porch, gasping and heaving and shifting back to nakedness. He crawls through the front door, listening for noise and movement. Erica and Boyd are out on a date, Isaac is god knows where and Scott is supposed to be at the movies with Allison and Stiles. He lies sprawled in the front hallway, moonlight spilling through the doorway behind him, skin wet, blood dripping thickly down to the floor boards, breath ragged in the heavy, humid night air. He manages, somehow, to make it almost to the stairway before he stops, exhausted. He can’t climb the stairs. He can barely _breathe_. He’s not healing. He doesn’t know why. He hates his life. He hates nachtkrapps and he hates this month. He wonders if this is it, if this is the end. It would be ok, he thinks, to die here, in his house, kind of lonely but at least it’s familiar and smells like—

Stiles.

“Oh my god, Derek.” It’s Stiles. Of course it’s Stiles. Derek is lying naked and almost dead on the floor and praying for sweet, sweet release and Stiles is there. Stiles with his beautiful face and kind eyes and stubborn mouth and impossibly long, deft fingers and broad shoulders and he’s looking at Derek like Derek matters, like Stiles is actually concerned and worried and—

It’s bad. Derek knows it’s bad. He can feel it in his bones how bad it is. He looks up at the ceiling of his hallway and blinks a few times. Stiles is hovering, quivering, hands clenching and unclenching in spasms.

“What happened?” he says. “I don’t know what to do,” he says. “This is really bad,” he says. “Where the fuck is Scott?”

“Scott can’t fix this,” Derek manages to say.

“Well I can’t fix this, either,” Stiles says, voice high and thin and reedy and panicked. But his hands are so cold and they feel so good on Derek’s burning, bloody skin, and Derek moans without realizing, which sends Stiles into another paroxysm of frenzied panic.

“I don’t want you to die, Derek,” Stiles says. He’s kind of shouting it.

“I don’t particularly want to die either, Stiles,” Derek says, turning his head a bit. “And yet.”

Stiles is touching him all over, little, icy buzzes against his hot skin. 

“Why are you wearing so many clothes?” Derek slurs. Through his hazy consciousness, he notices Stiles is wearing more layers than usual even, and way too many layers for this infernal month. Two T-shirts, a flannel and an unzipped sweatshirt. The tips of his fingers are chilled against Derek’s skin. It feels delicious.

“It’s a goddamn igloo in here, that’s why,” Stiles says and his teeth might be chattering.

“I’m hot,” Derek says, then laughs. Stiles doesn’t join in. Derek can feel cold fingers touching his neck and his face and his scalp and it feels so good he moans again.

“Oh, Derek. Jesus. Please don’t die. Please.”

“What are you even doing here?” Derek asks. Stiles still has his hands on Derek’s face, chill and calm but shaking. They feel _so good_.

“I fell asleep,” is all Stiles says, but even near death Derek can hear Stiles’ heart _tippety tap tap_ in its lie and he never really does answer the question about what he was doing here in the first place.

//

He doesn’t die. August has granted him a reprieve.

When he opens his eyes again he’s looking at the ceiling of his room and he’s very much not dead. He does, however, feel like he’s boiling to death from the inside: blood, bones, sinews, tendons. He’s naked except for a pair of old, ratty, blue boxers. Stiles is there, holding a wet washcloth and he’s wiping Derek’s body slowly and steadily from the neck down. The washcloth is cold, or it was, originally. With every swipe over Derek’s skin it loses its coldness bit by bit.

“Colder,” Derek says, voice gone all rusty and rough. Stiles jumps and hurries to the bathroom where he runs it under the tap. Derek can hear the water run and run, can hear Stiles squeeze it out, can hear his feet on the floor as he hurries back before the coldness disappears again.

“Oh hi,” Erica says, appearing in the doorway. She sounds relieved but not overly surprised. Takes a lot to kill old Derek off it seems. “You’re ok.”

Derek just looks at her. He doesn’t have anything to say to that. _Is_ he ok? He has no idea. Stiles comes through the doorway, cloth dripping, shoving Erica firmly out of the way — “_Move_.”

“And you’re in good hands,” she says, smiling a little before disappearing.

Again, Derek has no reply. He supposes he _is_ in good hands. Stiles’ hands are the _best_, and they’re moving up and down his body, cold cloth chilling his hot skin for a second before heating again. He might whisper _thank you_ before he turns his head and floats away, and dreams of ice and snow, stretching over endless earth, smooth and white and infinite.

//

_Every year, August lashes out in volcanic fury._

Bad things happen to Derek in August.

He gets a flat tire. Actually, he runs out of gas first, and as he’s swearing and sweating and maneuvering to the side of the road he runs over a broken bottle and _then_ gets a flat tire. He sets himself on fire, literally, while frying chicken for dinner, the bottom of his T-shirt igniting off the burner and going up like tinder before he can pat it down while simultaneously trying to swat at the screeching smoke alarm.

“Stop drop and roll!” Stiles yells frantically from the doorway, eyes wide, hands reaching out to help.

He rips his right thumbnail off entirely during a battle with a troll. He tumbles down an embankment while chased by pixies and rips his favourite jeans and ends up covered in mud. Erica can’t stop laughing, especially when Derek slips and falls on his ass as he makes his way slowly across the living room to the stairs to take a shower. His skin itches and he thinks he’s developing weird allergies. One afternoon he sneezes 27 times in an hour and he finds a red rash on his upper thighs. He’s grumpy and tired and he smells sour no matter how many showers he takes.

And he’s always, always, always fucking _hot_.

//

He wanders through the town at night dressed in as little clothing as possible. Tonight it’s 2 a.m. in a white sleeveless T-shirt and the jeans he ruined during his tumble, mud stained and hacked off above the knees. The air is thick with humidity, clinging to his skin, slapping at his face, crowding his lungs. It’s 2 a.m. and he finds himself standing outside the Stilinski house, examining the bulk and heft of the structure, listening for heartbeats and night breathing, picturing the sleeping, quiet bodies inside, sprawled on cool sheets, fans and air conditioning beating back the oppressive air. He sees a tiny light, firefly bright, dancing on the slightly sloped roof outside Stiles’ bedroom window. Then he sees the bulk of a darker shadow behind the light, a plume of smoke, a sigh, the grate of a body on shingles. Stiles. Stiles is sitting on the roof, smoking.

Huh.

Derek pulls himself up — bricks, drainpipe, gutter — plants himself next to Stiles, kicks his worn running shoes off the edge and lets his bare feet dig into the tarry black shingles. He can feel the heat of Stiles’ skin, his long, bare arm, radiating against his. It’s a different kind of heat, this skin heat, not cloying or aggravating, not close to sending him into some kind of fit or fury. It’s a heat he wants to nuzzle against, rub the palm of his hand over, lick up and down and up again.

Jesus.

“Hey,” Stiles says, nodding, like this is normal, like this is something that happens every night, him sitting on the roof of his house and Derek, barefoot and sweating, joining him wordlessly.

Stiles is holding something that looks like a long, slender white pen. He puts one end to his mouth and takes a drag, holds it, exhales. Derek watches. He can’t not watch. Anything that involves Stiles’ mouth and his hands in combination means he’s pretty much done for.

“It’s a dab pen,” Stiles says because Derek isn’t saying anything.

Derek nods, watches Stiles take another hit.

“Weed,” Stiles clarifies.

Derek nods again, watches Stiles’ lips and throat and the white smoke. Stiles is smiling and soft-eyed, all his nervous twitching and frantic gasping calmed and stilled. Derek likes both versions, he realizes. This Stiles he can watch without fear of giving anything away. This Stiles looks at Derek without worry or terror in his eyes. No one is bleeding or ripped open. No one is dying, or about to. This Stiles’ mouth is soft and pink and—

“I could like totally shot gun you.”

“What?”

“Like when I exhale and you inhale and —”

“Yes, Stiles. I know. I’ve smoked before.”

“You have?”

“Yes. There are varieties of weed that work on werewolves. I just don’t have any and I haven’t for a long time and I have no desire to get high at the moment.” He pauses. “Someone has to make sure you don’t fall off the roof.”

“True.”

They sit for a moment, smoke and sky and summer.

“Why?” Derek says.

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to…do that?”

“Oh.” Stiles considers. “I dunno.” Even in the dark, Derek can see the pink burning in his cheeks. “Just a suggestion.”

Derek nods and Stiles shrugs like he doesn’t care either way, but Derek sees something in his expression fall just a bit. They sit for a moment, silent, listening to one car drive by, headlights cutting through the dark below them. A door slams. A dog barks. 

“Ok,” Derek says because he’s hot and tired and it’s August and he’s sitting on a roof in the middle of the night. “You can try.”

“Try what?”

“You know. Shotgunning. Whatever.”

“Really?”

Derek shrugs and swallows, suddenly unsure. “Yeah. Like. Maybe it will work. I don’t know. Like I said, it’s been a long time. And I’ve never tried one of…those.” He waves at Stiles’ pen thing.

Stiles might just be high enough to buy this. He smiles widely and lopsided and takes a deep drag, holds it, leans forward, closer and closer, his mouth right next to Derek’s, and releases. Derek breathes in, watches Stiles face, the light sliding across his features, the arch of his brow, the tilt of his nose, the bowed lips, everything as familiar as always. His eyes flutter shut and Derek breathes, in out, lips almost touching Stiles’ but not quite, not quite. Stiles leans back just a bit and smiles, soft.

“Good?” he says. Derek coughs and his eyes water and and looks away.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s good.”

//

Derek tumbles into his bed and turns and turns, side to side, strips off everything until he’s naked, sweat slick and throbbing. He sleeps, fitful and fiery, and dreams of smoke and stars and Stiles. Stiles is naked too, miles of long, pale, smooth skin under Derek’s hands, smooth and cool under his fingertips, tripping against the beat of his pulse at the base of his neck and under the translucent skin of his wrists. Stiles is pale like snow and Derek wants to bury himself in him, snuff out the fire. Stiles nods and smiles and blows out pale smoke and bucks up his slim hips and touches him and touches him and when Derek wakes up he’s lying in a puddle again and this time it’s not just sweat.

He staggers down the stairs in the pitch black, fumbles for the air conditioning dial, turns it down to 65.

//

_Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?_

In August the afternoons swell to bursting with heat and humidity and cicadas and whoever is around goes swimming in the pond behind Derek’s house.

There’s a pond on Derek’s property, a 20-minute walk along a path overgrown with wood ferns and wild cucumber, morning glory and meadowfoam. They troop along, seven of them today, clustered in groups of two and three, with Derek at the lead, alone. His head is down, watching the ground, the tangled greenery licking at his ankles, the drone of mosquitoes in his ears, the trickle of beads of sweat down his neck, slow like bugs crawling.

The pond is small and cool and sun-dappled, probably full of bacteria, but no one cares, even Stiles, who really should care.

“Don’t swallow any of it,” Derek says before Stiles jumps in, frog legs, arms pinwheeling, head submerged completely, and when he emerges he’s already laughing, head shining silver in the sunshine. 

Derek sits on the bank and watches them. The water is cool, but not cool enough for Derek, not this month. It wouldn’t make a difference and would probably just aggravate him so he watches instead, the way the water slides down pale, smooth skin, dipping between collarbones and spine knobs, slipping past moles and dark hair dipping down below the waistband of red swim shorts.

Stiles moves like sin. Like spastic, uncontrolled sin with a mission, and that mission is to bring Derek to his knees one way or another. He’s wearing swim shorts, red with black cats on them and they hang almost to his knees, but his torso is bare, so Derek gets a face full of chest and shoulders and long arms and veins and hands and fingers. He sees it all. He sees Scott splashing Allison and Boyd throwing Erica as she screams and laughs and Isaac diving down slipping like an otter from one shore to the other. But it’s Stiles, it’s always Stiles, laughing and splashing, limbs and skin and bones, that snag in his chest and pulls him under.

//

The main bathroom is big and white and cavernous in his house and echoes pleasantly when Derek has time to appreciate such things as acoustics. Today he yanks the shower curtain back so viciously he hears one corner tear loose from its ring and he cranks the cold water tap hard. He’s naked and dripping and just barely starting to cool down when the bathroom door swings open and hits the wall behind it, followed by a gasp bordering between indignant and aroused.

“What are you doing?” Stiles demands and Derek would laugh if he had the energy.

“Baking a cake,” he says instead because what the fuck. “What are _you_ doing?”

“I—” Stiles’ mouth works and Derek knows, without looking, how the spaces high on his cheeks are red and raw. “What are you _doing_?”

Derek lets his forehead fall against the wall with a dull thud. He growls, low and long.

“You didn’t lock the door!” Stiles can barely form this sentence. His tongue sounds too big for his mouth. This is his defence, Derek thinks, that Derek didn’t lock his own bathroom door and instead of knocking Stiles entered like a bomb going off and now his sensibilities are being somehow compromised. His hands are shaking as he waves them in Derek’s direction. “The shower curtain? Is open?”

“Did you not hear the shower running?” Derek asks, not moving his head. Stiles stands there in the doorway. Derek can hear his heartbeat hammering and slamming and skipping, breath caught high in his throat. “And it’s _my_ shower in _my_ bathroom. I can do what I want.”

“Why are you showering with the curtain open?” is all he can come up with. Derek looks at him.

“Why are you still looking?”

“I’m not. I’m not. I won’t. Anymore,” Stiles says, and swallows so hard Derek can hear it over the water. It’s cold, but not cold enough. He looks up finally and meets Stiles wide eyes. Derek doesn’t move, just watches Stiles look up and down, up and down, cheeks flaming red, chest heaving, fingers clenched. Derek lets him look, lets him watch the shower water hit his head and run down the long planes of his body. Derek doesn’t say a word, not even when his dick starts to twitch under Stiles’ steady, appraising, open, heated gaze. Only when Derek is partially erect and still not moving does Stiles startle and turn and leave, slamming the door hard behind him.

//

It’s a quick easy climb to the roof outside Stiles’ bedroom and Derek has lots of practice. Stiles is sitting cross-legged, pale and messy-haired in a baggy blue T-shirt and plaid sleep shorts, face upturned, smile easy.

“You’re smoking a lot this summer,” Derek says, sitting beside him, close but not touching, not quite. He watches the smoke plume and whirl and disappear.

“This month,” Stiles corrects. “This month.” He waves a hand distractedly. “Things have been happening this month. A lot of things.” He says this conspiratorially, half-looks at Derek. Winks. Takes another hit.

Derek watches and watches, fire out and fire in and he waits. It’s 3 a.m. this time and the stars are out and there are two cats killing each other somewhere nearby. Or they’re fucking. Derek is about to ask Stiles what he thinks the cats are doing when Stiles pokes him in the shoulder.

“Want some of this?” Stiles says and laughs, soft and low. He’s watching too, Derek sees.

“Yeah,” Derek says and nods, because he really does.

Stiles takes a drag and leans over and Derek meets him halfway and they pretend they’re still not kissing. Not yet. Stiles blows smoke into Derek’s mouth once, and then again and again, over his mouth, down his throat. Derek accepts it, sucks it in, holds it in his chest, Stiles’ air and smoke, holds it as long as he can before expelling.

“Good,” Stiles says, approving, nodding. “Good.”

Derek doesn’t say anything because his throat is close and dry and he’s afraid he’ll start coughing if he tries to talk, to say anything with any weight or meaning.

“Can you feel anything?”

“Not really,” Derek says, shaking his head, smiling a bit to let Stiles know it’s ok anyway. But it’s a lie. He _can_ feel something, the same thing he always feels when he’s with Stiles: a stomach swooping twirl, light-headed fall from a great height, colours and sounds amplified, a shake and tingle in his hands.

Stiles leans over again and lets his hand rest on the side of Derek’s face, fingers behind Derek’s ear and palm cupping his jaw. He breathes out and Derek breathes in and then Derek leans closer and lets their mouths touch for longer than a breath and he touches the tip of his tongue to the middle of Stiles’ dry, bottom lip and thinks maybe this month isn’t a complete fuck up.

//

_August brings into sharp focus and a furious boil everything I’ve been listening to in the late spring and summer._

Derek catches Stiles looking at him even though he promised he wouldn’t.

He looks when Derek cooking or working on his car, when he’s training Erica and Boyd and Scott and Isaac in the yard. He looks when Derek is grumpy and swearing, glaring at the air conditioner dial, demanding to know who the fuck turned it up to 75 that is _too fucking hot for this time of year._ He looks when Derek is loud and when he’s quiet and when he’s sprawled on the couch, sweating, or returning from a run in the woods, also sweating.

He won’t stop looking. So, Derek looks right back.

He looks at Stiles’ face and nose and hair, and he looks at the way he waves his hands around when he tells a story. He looks at the slant of his nose and the sharp cut of his teeth, the exact placement of his moles. He listens to his heartbeat, and the sound and timbre of his voice, Like a radio station that he’s been listening to in the distance, in the background has suddenly come completely into tune, loud and clear.

Stiles says something dumb and goofy and Derek, grumpy and hot, laughs before he can help himself. He laughs and Stiles startles and looks at him and then he laughs too.

“You like that, Sourwolf?” he says, then grins like he knows the answer.

Derek just smiles and looks right at him, then away.

“Oh god,” Boyd mutters. “Get a room.”

That night the air conditioner dips to 62.

//

The shingles are still warm, clinging stubbornly to the memory of the hottest day of the year, when Derek settles next to Stiles. It’s 4 a.m. and the wind is up, just a bit, enough to rustle the leaves of the oak in the Stilinski front yard, little whispers as they rub against one another. Enough to take Stiles’ smoke and whip it away before Derek can admire it.

“Got this for you,” Stiles says, pulling something from his shorts’ pocket. Derek takes it, slim and smooth in his fingers. Derek raises an eyebrow. “It’s different. From mine.” Stiles smiles, waggles his eyebrows. “This one is _special_. This one is for _you_, if you get my drift. If you catch my meaning. If you can smell what I’m cook—”

“Ok, Stiles,” Derek says, and he’s smiling now. He puts it to his lips, old habit kicking in, muscle memory taking over. He takes a drag, then another and another, not expecting anything but wanting to show Stiles his thanks, his gratitude. Another. Stiles watches, calm, still and Derek is about to say, Well, it was worth a try, thanks anyway, when it hits him. It hits him all at once, like a brick to the face.

“Oh,” he says and Stiles looks at him, open and pleased.

“Yeah?” he says and Derek nods and Stiles nods. The world slips sideways, rainbow coloured, arcs and waves, tumbles and arches. He’s soft and boneless and warm, but for the first time all month it’s ok. He doesn’t care. He laughs and Stiles laughs too.

“I wasn’t sure,” he says. “I mean, Troy assured me it was good, but I just had to take his word for it so.”

Derek leans over then, closing the small distance between them, and kisses him, long and slow and hot and soft and Stiles kisses him right back. He kisses his lips and his chin and the divot under his nose, each cheekbone, the very tip of his nose. Stiles laughs. Derek’s head is heavy and light at the same time and he’s afraid to look down, over the edge of the roof. He kisses Stiles’ ear and closes his eyes, breathes in colours and sounds. His brain is running away from him and his mouth is following.

He lies back on the warm, rough shingles and thinks of everything he wants to say to Stiles. He thinks about all the years he’s looked at Stiles and caught Stiles looking at him. He thinks about what he’d like to do to Stiles if he had him alone in his bedroom, and what he’s like Stiles to do to him. He thinks about pack and the woods and the pond, about school and love and parents and children and years and years and he’s not sure if he’s said any of this out loud but Stiles is looking and smiling and nodding.

“My family died in August,” Derek says. He doesn’t know why. He wasn’t planning on it but he also wasn’t planning on getting high on Stiles Stilinski’s roof, or kiss him, or any of this really. He lets the words, old, hard-edged, oozing sadness, swirl around in his mouth before he releases them to the night air. He feels Stiles stir beside him, feels a dry, tentative touch on his arm.

“I know,” he says. “I remember.”

“This month,” Derek says. “This _month_.” He sucks in a long breath. It catches in his already dry throat and he starts coughing. He turns his head to the side and coughs and coughs while Stiles rubs his back. Then he starts laughing. Uncontrollably, laughing. Then, just for fun, he’s sobbing, cheek pressed to shingles, arms loose and long and Stiles is still rubbing his back and it’s still night and it’s still fucking August but something has loosened in his chest and Stiles’ hand is large and firm and warm and he just keeps rubbing and rubbing, anchoring Derek to the roof and the city and the whole world.

//

_People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy._

Stiles slides into him and out of him, skin glistening, sweat dripping. They’re both sweating now but Derek doesn’t mind. Sweat slicked skin on skin, and a shudder and a slide.

Stiles clings to Derek after they’ve both come, ignoring Derek’s claws and growls, insists that Derek just needs to lie still and go to sleep, it’s not that bad but Derek is having none of it.

“You’re too _hot_,” Derek says, pushing ineffectively at Stiles’ weight, sprawled across Derek’s chest. Stiles is sated and boneless and he grumbles, but he finally relents and moves blessedly away. Derek huffs and turns over and he drowses, dreams of endless desert sandscapes, sand under his nails, in his eyes and ears, throat filled with sand and not a cloud or mirage in sight. He dreams of _Stiles_, who may be the mirage he’s looking for after all. And as he slides hot hands across the sheets to find the bed empty he knows something.

He knows this: that he loves Stiles. And he knows this: that this feeling is as familiar as breathing, as comfortable and comforting as winter air, as cleansing as the first breath of winter. He loves. He loves. He loves Stiles.

He awakes, slowly and wetly, to Stiles smiling, Stiles holding a bag with two hands. Derek squints, rubs his eyes.

It’s a bag of ice from the grocery in town, clear with a twist tie and CAM’S CONVENIENCE emblazoned across the side in bright blue. Stiles plops it down on Derek’s bare stomach, grinning wickedly. Derek jolts and sighs in relief, happy. He may moan, loudly. Stiles stands still, eyes wide, watching. He licks his lips and blinks and nods to himself. He grabs the bag and moves it, up and down Derek’s torso, up to his neck, just under his chin, and down to the bottom of his stomach, just above his dick. Derek throws his head back, bites his bottom lip, tries not to arch completely off the bed. Stiles moves the bag from the top of one shoulder down down his arm to his hand, then the other arm. Hips, thighs, calves, the tops of his feet. The bag is starting to sweat, water trails on skin. Derek’s getting hard again. He can’t help it.

“Oh,” Stiles says, fingers twitching. He licks his lips, grabs the bag, opens the tops and pulls out cubes, holds them wet and dripping in his hands.

“Oh,” says Derek.

“Yeah,” Stiles says and then rubs him all over with ice. Up and down his arms, his stomach, his face, legs and feet. When the ice he’s holding melts, he grabs more and keeps going, makes Derek turn over so he can do his back and his ass. And everywhere the ice goes, it’s followed by Stiles’ mouth, his lip, his tongue. For the first time in weeks Derek feels _cold_ and then he comes again and lets Stiles cover his body with his own, lets him kiss him with his warm, wet mouth, lets him cover them with a blanket and sleep curled together.

In the middle of the night, shivering slightly, he even lets Stiles go downstairs and turn the air conditioner up, just a bit, to 69.

//

“August used to be a sad month for me,” Derek says against Stiles’ bare shoulder. He says it like a confession or an offering. He feels shy about it, like something he should be writing in a journal, not saying out loud to this boy who means so much.

Stiles kisses him like he means it, like he feels the same, and he nods at the same time. “I know.” Stiles knows a lot, apparently. Derek likes that about him. Wise Stiles. Derek wraps his arms around him long, warm, wiry frame and holds him close.

//

On the last day of the month, Derek runs through the woods, heaving and panting, moon on his face, on his back. He swims in the pond, shifted, fur dark and thick and wet. He sits outside Stiles’ house and howls and then the clock and the calendar turn he howls again. He hears movement in Stiles’ room, the rustling and shifting of sheets, of Stiles turning and smiling and whispering, It’s September.

It’s _September_.

It’s the first day of September. School is coming. Fall is coming. Derek can smell it in the air. The promise of cold and dark and stars like lights and beyond that, snow and quiet. And he can breathe.

On the night of the first day of September, the sky is pink. The sky is pink and orange, bright colours reflected in the leftover rainwater of the Stilinski’s driveway and Derek is in love. It’s going to be hot tomorrow, because the sky is pink and orange, but it’s ok. It’s ok because August is over and maybe he doesn’t hate it quite so much anymore.

And he _loves_ Stiles. With a _passion._

Derek breathes and breathes and breathes and sucks in air like it’s the first breath of winter.

//

_Quotes courtesy of Sylvia Plath, Henry Rollins, Shakespeare, Anton Chekhov and a Swedish Proverb._

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea when the Hale House fire took place in canon, but for the purposes of this story, it took place in fucking _August._


End file.
